Replacing Islington’s Jeremy Corbyn with Camden’s Keir Starmer never seemed like the most obvious way for Labour to win back its lost northern heartlands.
True, Starmer was not such an extremist as Corbyn, but his classic leftie London lawyer mindset was surely destined to go down like a lead balloon out on the Blue Wall. That was the comforting story the Tories told themselves when he was elected Labour leader anyway. And things may still pan out that way.
But something unsettling for the Conservatives is certainly going on right now. As James Forsyth sets out in his latest Spectator piece, the fact that the rise in the incidence of Covid is concentrated across the north of England and the Midlands makes the Government’s newfound emphasis on using local measures to tackle the pandemic politically very tricky.
The deeply culturally embedded idea of the Tories being a snooty, southern-orientated party – which Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson hoped they had consigned to the past – could well be granted a second wind.
This was territory expertly mined by Andy Burnham during his appearance on the BBC’s Question Time on Thursday night.
Complaining about not having been informed of impending new regional restrictions, Labour’s Mayor of Greater Manchester told viewers: ‘It does feel increasingly to people like we are being treated with contempt in the north of England. We can’t face a national crisis with the Government just imposing decisions from the centre. Otherwise the north of England is going to be levelled down this winter.’ Plain speaking in flat vowels was here being used to potentially devastating political effect.
And Burnham is by no means the only northern big gun Labour is deploying. For the Tories are suddenly realising that Starmer has at his disposal a ‘Coronation Street chorus’ of northern spokespeople. The lads – Burnham, Steve Rotheram and Dan Jarvis – are all high-profile elected mayors of northern city regions. The lasses – Angela Rayner, Lisa Nandy and Lucy Powell – influential members of Labour’s frontbench Commons team.
If a key facet of a political party is to look and sound like the people it wants to vote for it then Labour’s Corrie Crew is going to win this autumnal battle for northern hearts and minds hands down.
For the only northerner sitting even for a vaguely northern seat in Boris Johnson’s Cabinet is Education Secretary Gavin Williamson. And for obvious reasons he is not allowed out very often.
Other than that, the main northerners around the Cabinet table are the over-stretched and increasingly irritable Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Steve Barclay, all of whom sit for constituencies in the south.
Neither are the ranks of Ministers of State brimming with recognisably northern voices capable of reassuring voters in the Blue Wall that the Government is in touch with their concerns.
Clearly the Government will ultimately be judged primarily on substance – whether it achieves its aim of ‘levelling-up’ left-behind parts of the country. But given that achievement on this score has been rendered far harder by the many crippling impacts of the Covid crisis, the Tories need to do well on a subsidiary measure – whether their hearts have been in the right place.
As things stand an awful lot is going to rest on the impact made at a constituency level by new Blue Wall MPs such as Burnley’s Antony Higginbotham, Leigh’s James Grundy or Dehenna Davison in Bishop Auckland.
It will be a tall order to expect them to fend off a determined Labour challenge if levelling-up has effectively been postponed for a parliament, unemployment has soared and the feel of their party has been overwhelmingly southern in the interim. The onus will very heavily be on Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who at least represents a Yorkshire seat, to find further ways to cushion the north from the impact of job losses.
But regional reinforcements are urgently required. Some promotions are in order and hopefully the discovery of some northern and Midland Tories with star quality. Mansfield’s Ben Bradley, first elected in 2017, is one who seems to have a bit of spark, recently refusing to participate in ‘unconscious bias’ training at Westminster. Andrea Jenkyns, who took Ed Ball’s Morley and Outwood seat in 2015, is another with discernible gumption.
Creating room at the top for Blue Wallers is, however, going to take time and going into this first – and hopefully only – Covid winter with the north in the firing line and the south in the driving seat looks like an accident waiting to happen.
Comments